Historian Jean Fischer lives and studies amid the city now known as Avon

Jean Fischer, 85, lives in a house in Avon that is 187 years old, but her knowledge of Avon history extends at least as long as that.

Her home was built by Wilbur Cahoon, the first settler of a wilderness of woods -- teeming with black bears, deers and racoons -- that would one day be called Avon.

Cahoon would arrive at this area in 1814. He completed his house in 1825.

"I wasn't the greatest person on history," said Fischer, now an Avon historian and a member of the Avon Historical Society.

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"But, just living in an old house, it just spurs you to find out what went on before you," she said.

The fact that this was the first settler's house is what first sparked my interest in it," Fischer said.

Fischer and her late husband, Dr. Delbert Fischer, an orthopedic surgeon, moved to Lorain from Cleveland in 1956.

In 1966, they purchased and moved into the 12-room Cahoon house on Stoney Ridge Road in Avon. Fischer retired in 1987 and passed away 20 years later. Mrs. Fischer still lives in the house.

Fischer knows Avon history like the back of her hand and her stories are so vivid and alive, one could see them like pictures on the pages of a graphic novel.

"Did you know that Avon was originally called Xuema?" Fischer said. "It was an ancient Greek city.

"At that time, the Greeks were fighting for their freedom. All things Greek were popular, such as the Early Greek Revival architecture of the Cahoon house," Fischer said.

Another interesting historical fact shared by Fischer, among numerous others, is that Detroit Road was so-named because it went all the way from Avon to the city of Detroit.

A question naturally arises when discussing very old houses: "Any ghosts?"

"As a matter of fact, my daughter, when she was two years old, said she saw a ghost," Fischer said. "She would tell us it's in her bedroom. She said his name was Wilbur.

"To my knowledge, she never heard about Wilbur Cahoon."

But there's more: "My great-granddaughter mentioned she saw a ghost. The house is very strange," Fischer said.

"A man named Arthur Krumweider restored the house in the late 1940s. He discovered brick (used) in the walls. But the house is all wood," Fischer said. She speculates that the brick might have been used as a type of insulation against the brutally cold winters.

Ghosts weren't the main problem visitors in the early days of Avon.

It was in 1814, during the first winter that the Cahoons spent in Ohio, that a black bear nearly wiped out all three Cahoon children.

"The three Cahoon boys and their two dogs were walking north of Detroit Road," Fischer said. "It was in December, and the land was swampy. They chased a black bear and got into a bit of an altercation. Their (gun) powder was wet. So, they used their hunting knives and stabbed and stabbed until they killed the bear. There were 17 stab wounds. But the boys and the dogs survived."

Fischer said Cahoon moved his family from Montgomery County, N.Y., to land owned by the Connecticut Land Company, which eventually became Avon.

"The Connecticut Land Company said that the first man to establish a grist and sawmill on the land owned by the Connecticut Land Company would receive a hundred dollars," Fischer said.

A builder and carpenter, Cahoon took up the challenge and became the first man to establish the two mills.

Cahoon's brother, Joseph, established a grist mill owned by the Connecticut Land Company in a spot that first was called Dover and later became Bay Village," Fischer said.

The Cahoon house sits along French Creek on one acre of land.It's all that remains of the thousand acres of land once owned by the Cahoon family.

"One acre left out of a thousand," Fischer said. "Only one acre, but I'm happy to have it."